I was told Swift’s real profit base is pre-teen and young-teen girls (and their parents), and it’s my impression that those girls are a lot more LGBGTQ-friendly than their Tennessee elders… Per the Tennessean:

… The 28-year-old superstar took to Instagram on Sunday night to weigh in on Tennessee’s closely contested U.S. Senate race, endorsing Democratic former Gov. Phil Bredesen as she offered a harsh rebuke of U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, the Republican nominee.

Her endorsement of Bredesen marks the first time Swift has spoken publicly about politics.

“As much as I have in the past and would like to continue voting for women in office, I cannot support Marsha Blackburn,” Swift wrote, elaborating that “her voting record in Congress appalls and terrifies me.”

Swift specifically noted Blackburn’s vote against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, versions of which Blackburn has opposed in recent years. She also condemned Blackburn’s stance against marriage equality

“These are not MY Tennessee values,” Swift wrote…

In her Instagram post, Swift said she has been “reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now.”

“I always have and always will cast my vote based on which candidate will protect and fight for the human rights I believe we all deserve in this country,” she wrote. “I believe in the fight for LGBTQ rights, and that any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender is WRONG. I believe that the systemic racism we still see in this country towards people of color is terrifying, sickening and prevalent.”…

And if she’s just broken a few Nazi hearts, well…

“4chan Nazis devastated by Taylor Swift’s TN Senate endorsement” is the energy I needed to carry me into Monday.

It’s worth saying the meme “Taylor Swift is a secret Nazi who worships Odin and voted for Trump” was always clickbait to push articles for years with no basis in reality requiring no work and triggering little public reticence, all capitalizing on hesitancy to push back at all. pic.twitter.com/c4SzFoQj9b

“I wish when I was 12 years old, I had been able to watch a video of my favorite actress explaining—in such an intellectual, beautiful, poignant way—the definition of feminism, because I would have understood it, and then earlier on in my life I would have proudly claimed that I was a feminist because I would have understood what the word means.”

“So many girls out there say ‘I’m not a feminist’ because they think it means something angry or disgruntled or complaining. Or they picture rioting and picketing. It’s not that at all. It simply means you believe women and men should have equal rights and opportunities, and to say that you’re not a feminist means that you think men should have more rights and opportunities than women. I just think that a lot of girls don’t know the definition and the fact that Emma [Watson] got up and explained it [in a speech at the U.N.) is an incredible thing, and I’m happy to live in a world where that happened.”

As for her not talking politics because it might influence people and she didn’t think she knew enough to engage in that…. Obvious horseshit, spoonfed to her by handlers who were scared to death that alienating some people might impact the bottom line and their share of the cut. At the time she was no doubt still too young and unsure of herself to pushback very hard. This latest turn is her gaining confidence in her own belief system and realizing that even if she loses 20% she will still be the highest paid pop/country artist in the country.

@OzarkHillbilly: Yeah, I think she’s just getting older and coming into her own in some ways. I got to listen to a lot of Taylor Swift while my exchange daughters were with me, and she’s a pretty sharp cookie judging by some of the lyrics she writes.

Two Americans awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for their work on climate change and innovation

William Nordhaus was awarded the prize for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis. Paul Romer shared in the honor for integrating technological innovation into long-run macroeconomic analysis.

He has to swear fealty to Donald Trump publicly. Trump does it to all of his high profile, low quality sycophants. It’s to remind that they wouldn’t be there without Donald Trump:

JUDGE BRETT M. KAVANAUGH: Mr. President, thank you. Throughout this process, I have witnessed firsthand your appreciation for the vital role of the American judiciary. No president has ever consulted more widely or talked with more people from more backgrounds to seek input about a Supreme Court nomination. Mr. President, I am grateful to you and I am humbled by your confidence in me. Thank you.

Kiss up and kick down- that’s the Brett we’ve all come to know. Trump owns him now. If he doesn’t follow orders they’ll threaten to release all the dirt they have on him.

They were young adults — sisters, brothers, old friends and newlyweds — who were celebrating one of their birthday’s in a rented SUV limousine on a drive through rural Schoharie County.

They are now victims of the nation’s deadliest transportation disaster in nine years.

Twenty people died Saturday afternoon in the horrific wreck at the intersection of state routes 30 and 30A in the town of Schoharie. The stretch limo, packed with 18 people, drove through a stop sign at the notorious intersection and fatally struck two people in the parking lot of a popular country store, before slamming into an earthen embankment and killing all of the oversized vehicle’s occupants.

Yeah, I think she’s just getting older and coming into her own in some ways.

This. We each mature at different rates, but in my own life, the difference between 22 (her age for that 2012 interview) and 28 was enormous. I’m gonna give her props for speaking out at the right time, now that she feels she’s capable of it.

Here’s the kind of rigorous, scholarly completely “independent” analysis we can expect:

JUDGE BRETT M. KAVANAUGH: Mr. President, thank you. Throughout this process, I have witnessed firsthand your appreciation for the vital role of the American judiciary.

We all witnessed it first hand. There was this:

The judge, Gonzalo Curiel, first entered the Trump political story long before the President came to the White House, back when Curiel got a class-action lawsuit concerning students who said they had been defrauded by Trump University. The case was ultimately settled after Trump won the White House.
Trump said Curiel was not going to be impartial because he was “Mexican.” Curiel works in the Southern District of California but was born in Indiana.

And then this:

Shortly after 8 a.m. ET, the President tweeted, “The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned.”

A hundred million or so witnesses and a transcript and Brett goes with the lie anyway. Susan Collins would say clearly someone tried to intimidate two federal judges, but it wasn’t Donald Trump. She doesn’t know who wrote those tweets.

We actually have a lot of research on heavy drinking in adolescents. Synopsis- It’s bad:

Heavy alcohol consumption in late adolescence appears to persist into adulthood and is associated with alcohol problems, including dependence, premature death and diminished work capacity.

I’m a little surprised conservatives are pro-binge drinking in high school and college. The scientific consensus for the last 30 years has been we really don’t want to promote that. It’s really bad for kids. Brett seems to have escaped any legal/societal consequences but that has much more to do with his privileged upbringing and social status than anything else. Most kids won’t be protected like that. The vast majority will pay for it in some way. Any trial judge can tell you that.

I’m certainly not telling my son binge drinking is okay. I probably wouldn’t be able to protect him from the consequences.

Taylor Swift has won her lawsuit against David Mueller, the Denver-based radio DJ who she accused of groping her at a pre-concert photo op in 2013, the New York Times reports. A federal jury in Denver found that Mueller had committed assault and battery and ordered him to pay Swift the symbolic amount of $1 she’d asked for.

The vast majority of young women couldn’t have sued him- they wouldn’t have the resources- and they sure as hell wouldn;t have gotten blanket media coverage. I wonder if it had an effect on her legions of young fans- that they don’t have to put up with it.

At one point, Swift was shown the photo of her with Mueller in which she claims the alleged incident took place. She was asked why her skirt doesn’t appear to be lifted in the photo, if she claims that was when Mueller was groping her. Her response? “Because my ass is in the back of my body.”

it is depressing but it’s pretty clearly an end result of the last 3 decades of republican party thought. it’s just now they have a guy who actually says all the shit they’ve been thinking out loud. trump represents the republican id that has been there all along.

@OzarkHillbilly: I believe this and other comments that she has “matured” are unlikely to be completely true. That’s like saying that Obama and Hillary (or their handlers) were personally against gay marriage in 2008 until they had a change of heart or that Nike “matured” when they threw their weight behind Kapernick his year.

There is a lot of evidence hinting on their views before them. In the case of politicians it wasn’t politically possible for those to be expressed until later (on a national stage, whereas others on a more local stage could, remember 2008 was the same year that prop 8 passed in my state, California). In the case of commercial entities and artists, things have changed now so that, especially with millennials and the next generation, NOT expressing a socio-political view is seen as inauthentic and their bottom line hurts.

There are tweets now happening regularly, comments or jokes said today (like on SNL Weekend Update about Kanye or the republican senators) that couldn’t have been said 5 years ago, let alone 12, which is when Taylor Swifts career started. A regular theme on a typical show mentioned in passing would have gotten calls to boycott and a retraction before “million moms” gave up the ghost as fake and their supporters stopped watching the “lamestream media” in favor of alex jones and the alt right youtube.

Trump may have broken down social norms, but he has also created a new one: stand for something, only your supporters are watching. Taylor Swift is very savvy and can read the winds just as well as Nike.

As for others like Trump, Kanye, Kardashian, and the Republicans? They sowed that wind, now they reap the whirlwind.

@Neldob: I think it was Miley Cyrus who covered “Jolene.” I remember being happily surprised by her depth on it.

Good for Swift. I’m really optimistic about Bredesen’s chances here—he was a popular moderate governor, and before that, our mayor here in Nashville. I know he said the dumb stuff about how he’d vote for Kavanaugh, etc. But here, it just might peel him some votes. He certainly took the winds out of the opposition’s sails by saying it. Blackburn is going to suffer at the hands of her own deplorables for being a woman, which serves her patriarchal ass right—a lot of TN Trumpers would rather vote for a rich old white guy, and they remember the good economy with Phil.

Anyway, I’ve lived in her district, and I feel like whatever Bredesen has to do to crush Marsha, he should do. She’s awful.

I don’t understand that comment as written given the fact that 25 is generally considered to be adult. At what age does the neuro scientist you quoted think someone is an adult? Not knocking you, merely curious.

@Mandarama: Fun fact: Dolly Parton is Miley’s godmother. And yes her cover of “Jolene” is pretty damn good. I mean she’s way overproduced like almost all the pop artists are now but she actually does have a decent alto voice.